Lawrence Peter Berra should never have gone back to the zoo that is the yankees in the Steinbrenner era. By doing so he belittled himself to no end.

--"Huh? Belittled? Huh? That's too big a word for a very typical sportswriter to use. Grantland Rice or Ring Lardner or Red Smith or Jim Bouton may have used it, but not ME."--King Kaufman

--"No it isn't, Dad...We learned that word in my elementary school!"--Buster

--"No it isn't Daddy...That word is exceptionally simplistic. Me and all my friends use it all the time...At Recess...In the playground...in the Girl's Room and everywhere else besides. Even Mommy says it all the time! It really is quite a simple word...We learned it in my PRE-SCHOOL class!!!"--Daisy (AKA) Buster Jr.

I am a big Allen Barra fan. Based on this interview I am going to order this book.

Nice interview. My one complaint is that both of you hedge way too much when it comes to extolling Yogi's greatness as a player. Barra says he was one of the most valuable players in history, but argues for the intangible elements as though they are needed. You start the article: "Allen Barra says a case can be made ..."

But the case isn't exactly some stretch from which you need distance yourself, and intangibles aren't necessary to make it. Bill James -- no big fan of intangibles -- rates Berra the greatest catcher in the history of the game, ahead of Bench and Campanella and Piazza and everyone else.

So quit hedging: "There's a strong case that Yogi Berra was the greatest catcher in history."

Article stated no Hall of Fame pitchers on 49-53 Yankees. Whitey Ford elected in 1974. He played in '50 and 53 Series.

http://www.salon.com/sports/kaufman/feature/2009/01/07/1956/index.html

That probably is the earliest I can remember. Watching on black and white TV with my dad and Uncle Jim plus my brother Joe and cousin Davey.

Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford. My dad told us that Yogi was an old man, in his mid-thirties. My dad and Uncle Jim still were hotshots, twelve years out of World War Two, and heading for the stars.

That was the best time in the USA, in the upper midwest. My dad and Uncle Jim made about the same salary as Yogi Berra, about ten grand, probably. We boys were happy as all-get-out, plenty of trees to climb, plenty of big waves to ride, future astronauts watching the miracle of TV with our dads.

Western Michigan was Paradise then. We were not linked up with the rest of the country yet, no brown crud on the horizon; we had no insoluable problems that we knew about.

A very good time to grow up in the USA. Yogi Berra's era.

He started playing some OF in his thirties to prevent wear and tear, and eventually reached a point where he was playing more OF than catcher. Had a bad year in 1962, and responded the following year (at age 38) by going back to catching exclusively, behind Elston Howard.

This was the year Howard won the MVP, but check out their stats:

Howard .287/.342/.528

Yogi .293/.360/.497

The team went 79-49 (.617) with Ellie at catcher, and 24-8 (.750) with Yogi. They somehow managed to win the pennant by ten games despite Mantle missing 2/3 of the season, and with an infield of Pepitone, Richardson, Kubek, and Clete Boyer.

And that was it for Yogi, save a cameo with the Stengel-managed Mets in '65.

(BTW, those 17 consecutive All-Star "appearances" covered the years they played two All-Star games, so by our present-day standards he was a 15-time All-Star.)

My father listened to just about every Yankee game on the radio throughout Berra's career. He hated the Yankees but he revered Berra. I know that the idea of "clutch hitting" gets a fish eye from King but my father was absolutely certain that there was such a thing and would expatiate on it at length. He always extolled Berra as the greatest clutch hitter ever. I don't know what a survey of the games would show and my father's opinion was obviously anecdotal evidence, but it was based on a lot of anecdotes. "Dangerous" was a favorite word of his, too, one still around, for the hitter you don't want to see up there, never mind his current BA. That was Berra.

In my own time I noted that Berra won pennants in both leagues with teams that played beyond their ability and then got a lot worse after he was let go. I've always thought he was the most underrated manager of my lifetime.

Thanks for a refreshing piece.

I had the opposite reaction of commenter jslevin: I think Barra's case for Yogi is hyperbolic to the point of being incredible.

No serious baseball fan disputes that Yogi was an all-time great, and he's among everyone's top 5 catchers. But throughout this interview, I felt like Josh Gibson was the elephant in the room. In arguing for Berra's greatness, jslevin cited Bill James, who in his 2001 Baseball Abstract wrote, "I have little doubt that Josh Gibson was the greatest catcher in the history of baseball," and ranked Yogi Berra as the 41st-best player in history, Gibson 9th. I assume King didn't mention Gibson out of politeness to his friend, which is understandable.

I was a little stunned to learn that Barra thinks Yogi is so underrated. Who doesn't think Berra was one of the three or four best catchers in history?

Finally, the notion that you would draft Yogi ahead of Ruth or Mays on his intangibles is foolish. There are lots of great players you can build a clubhouse around. Musial. Kaline. Aaron. Clemente. The 1970s Reds. Ripken, Maddux, Jeter, etc. The notion that Berra was so singularly valuable in this regard does not seem plausible to me. Taking Berra ahead of Ruth follows the same logic as David Eckstein over Albert Pujols, or Robert Horry ahead of Shaq and Tim Duncan.

It was lovely to see that Barra exclusively mentioned Yankees (Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle, Berra) as players who might be worthy of a top pick. I find it hard to take seriously someone who is so partial.